Posted
by
Zonk
on Tuesday September 19, 2006 @10:25AM
from the ye'll-get-im-next-time-buckos dept.

Billosaur writes "Apparently the 'scurvy dawgs' are still in control. Results from Sunday's Swedish national election were not favorable for the Pirate Party, according to Wired News. According to the article, 'The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.' However, the party sees this as a learning experience and morale is still good."

I just ran for president of Sweden for the pirate party. Obviously the "DrunkenSailor" was a write-in and I lost. But it's for the better; who wants to lead a country that houses dirty war and drug money and is known only for neutrality (not of the net) and watches and knives.
oh wait. there are hot chicks there, write me in damnit

That's because they've got money falling out of every orifice. The average wage is something like $300K. They buy loads of great army type stuff insist that everyone has to spend a little while in there army defending there country, while refusing to go to war with anyone.

However, it also costs $5.00 to sit down and have a cup of coffee. Everything is relative. My dad went on a business trip to switzerland, and was amazed at the price of even simple things. Thank diety his company paid for it all. You need to be making $300K in that country just to make ends meet.

Perhaps if they have a serious name, and carried themselves in a more serious manner, people would have voted for them. I agree that someone needs to look into privacy and intellectual property laws who understands them. But I wouldn't seriously vote for a "Pirate" party.

At least they're not trying to hide their intentions. Liberal parties who aren't liberal seem to come to mind. Democratic parties that fix elections. I would applaud them for letting people know their intentions, and stop trying to have a hidden agenda.

Though the parent is quite obviously a troll (seriously mate, you're wasting your words if you think that post has any affect at all - it's way too obvious), I feel the need to correct him just for the sake of rigour.

The Pirate Party does not seek to abolish copyright or try to steal copyright but simply limit it. 70 years past the death of the author is stupid. Copyright was developed as incentive to the author to create work. I don't see why the author would see less incentive to create work when co

That's most likely what they tipped over: It's a "lost vote" 'cause they won't make it anyway and so on.

In fact, if you do the math, you'll see that in the long run, it does usually not matter. Coalitions are rarely formed with a single vote majority, usually the majorities are held with substancially more seats than the one or two that MIGHT have been to their favor if you just didn't vote for the "underdog" party instead.

In fact, though, they want that seat, if for no other reason than to sit on of their guys there and cash in more for their party from the governmental pot. So, if you vote for a party that furthers your agendas, even if they don't make it into parlament, the parties that are in there will try to get that odd 2 percent of voters by adding that agenda to their portfolio.

In short, your vote will move more with the underdog party than with the one that you could vote for instead. When you're already in, 2% is not a significant change when it comes to coalition talks. But it's usually one or two seats in parlament, and boy, they want that seats!

Now get on that position paper to describe why IP freedom will improve government services, shrink the cost of healthcare, decrease taxes all while creating both long and short term job growth and increasing global competitiveness.

It's important that they've learnt things from this and it's interesting to note that they did get quite a few votes. I know people will see less than the 1% limit for government help with adverts etc as a loss, but consider that this is a party which has been around for what... a year? It is so new, it is taking such a radical idea, and it got over 0.5% of the national vote?
That is fantastic!

Don't forget that this is people's vote in a general election. Any are a big deal and most people won't make a choice lightly. They might see votes as a waste because they might not even get anyone in parliament which puts people off voting for them as they want their vote "to count". Also a lot of people in the country will already have aligences to parties and even though they might really agree with the message they might be reluctant to turn against the party which represents what they want overall better. Its hard to have a successful "single issue" party, I'm not sure what their other policies are but they will be important and you need to tell people what these are to let them know that your not just a one trick horse.

In the Swedish elections there were issues of massive importance going on. The right of centre party actually won on a promise to cut down on what has been the jewel in the crown of the worlds welfare states, a social democratic state (to use the terms of Esping-Anderson) and one with a high degree of decomodification. This was a big deal to a lot of people. If you look at pretty much any of the literature on the subject of welfare states then you'll see that m

As a side note I would say that it is quite shocking that they have voted out the social democratic party, especially when their conventional wisdom says that the two track tax burden (high personal tax but low corporate tax) was working and the welfare state was doing them the world of good.It's worth noting that the Centre-Right coalition (for the first time ever campaigning together as a single ticket under the name Alliance for Sweden) did very much announce that they are not going to lower taxes or rad

I mean, i support a lot of what they lobby for, but I'd much rather vote for a party which also supports my ideas on a whole range of other issues.This goes in particular in an election that's been running so close as the swedish one did this time.

Single issue parties, should really stop being parties, and start doing some serious lobbying instead. I do understand that they're doing it, since i realize it can be very hard for young people to be heard by politicians on new and controversial ideas on an old subject.

I hope noone ever gets voted into parliament anywhere based on such a narrow issue, I really feel it would be a double loss for democracy, the first because it should never be the only way to be taken serious, and the second, because once they get in, you'll have no clue on how they vote for issues that are very important to all of us.

Single-issue parties can work quite well under some systems of government. In fact, from what I've seen, in a system that supports them they are as good or better than lobbying is in other systems.

But you have to have a coalition-style ruling government for them to have any useful effect. I don't know how Sweden's government is set up, and whether it can support single-issue parties as part of the government.

Well that city seems to love the losers named Pirates.
Even the stadium threatened to leave the city [theonion.com] if better team is not found. Still they keep the Pirates. So the city is sending a clear message to the world. Are you a loser? Are you named Pirates? Welcome. You are now a honorory Pittsburgher

The Pirates aren't as bad as their record. They'll be half-way decent int he next year or two. They got some young studs like Jason Bay, Jose Bautista, Freddy Sanchez, Zach Duke, Ian Snell, Chris Duffy, Mike Gonzalez, and Ryan Doumit. They just need a few veterans in their pitching rotation, and they need to get rid of the following anchors: Jack Wilson and Jeromy Burnitz.

Given the outright comedy*, cynicism, back-stabbing in the pre-elections, and the political parties going from scandal to scandal, I'd assume that the minors would be in a really good position to pick up a lot of stray votes.

* ie: the "hacking" scandal , involving a user with same username and password, which from no usefull information was found. A couple of corruption charges (all ridiciously minor compared to what's legal over in the US) and general aggresive debating.

Between this and the whole 'Snakes on a Plane" fiasco, I think it's time for us to accept that the Internet is not the 'force to be reckoned with' that we all would like it to be, and that 'net geeks, as a whole, aren't cohesive enough to have that much pull when compared to the mundanes.

The "Snakes on a Plane" hype stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding of what was driving people to pay attention to the hype. The studios and critics thought that it all came from genuine excitement about the movie, while the Intarweb-using public actually was wondering how the hell anybody could name a movie something so dumb.Maybe there's something similar going on concerning the Pirate Party, but one big difference between the two is that the Pirate Party will get another bite at the apple in future

The Social Democrats just got ousted from power by a moderate coallition that is seeking to introduce some market reforms into Sweden. Gee, you think that might have something to do with a fledgling party whose property rights philosophy is probably left of the Social Democrats not getting any attention?

The Social Democrats just got ousted from power by a moderate coallition that is seeking to introduce some market reforms into Sweden. Gee, you think that might have something to do with a fledgling party whose property rights philosophy is probably left of the Social Democrats not getting any attention?

I wouldn't categorize the Pirate Party as a left wing party. For instance, the founder Rickard Falkvinge [wikipedia.org] is a former member of Moderate Youth League [wikipedia.org] the youth organization of the Swedish Moderate Party (conservative).

Besides, the election results had more to do with people wanting new faces in politics (especially the prime minister), and an incredibly lacking campaign by the Social Democrats, basically just repeating how "things are great", neglecting every concern expressed by the people and saying nothing about what they want to do in the future. At the same time, the moderates described themselves as "the new working class party" (calling themselves "the New Moderate Party") and lauded the welfare state. So people switched.

Despite needing a much higher % of votes to get an MP for the EU Parliament, it might be easier to get in there. Scandinavians consider the EU Parliament a joke anyway, so why not just vote for a "less-serious" party? Voter turnout is much lower, so any party that can mobilize its core constituency can do well. Once inside the EU Parliament, there is a lot that can be done, it will mean lots of publicity, and lots of money will pour into the party coffers.Also, getting 1% in the first election so fast after

The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.

Yet again showing that those of us who care about this stuff are in an extreme minority. We delude ourselves every time we believe that our concerns are going to be taken up by the general populace. It makes me wonder. Will the Wii actually be successful

The Pirate Party are currently at 0.64% with around 60% of the votes counted. Given the party is less than a year old and the issues involved (how many non-geeks care about file sharing and privacy?) I would consider this a remarkable success. Especially considered this election was the first in 12 years where the previously ruling Social Democrats were challanged by a strong center-right coalition (note, btw, Swedish center-right is more leftist than the US left). When both the center-right bloc and the ce

The Pirate party may not reached the Riksdag, but they have already caused ALL parties to reconsider their position on file sharing.

The Greens just published a policy document named "Free the files" which is basically a copy of the Pirate partys program.

The leaders of the Moderates and the Social Democrates (the two largest parties) have stated that the the much critizied law from last year that outlawed file sharing should be reconsidered.

ALL youth leagues of all parties are pro-filesharing.

In the school elections the party got 4.5% of the votes, even without preprinted ballots. In short, the pirate party has shown that a large portion of the youth are interested in these issues, and no party can afford to alienate entire generations.
So while it didn't get into parliment, the pirates did already influency policy and debate- much more than any of the other small parties.

The Pirate Party is a global movement! It started in Sweden but is becoming the first global party ever! The goal is to have an official Pirate Party in each EU country when the EU election takes place in 2009. It's not limited to Europe though, parties are forming in Brazil, Australia, USA, Canada and many other countries outside of Europe.This is a list of the current Pirate Parties that have their own homepage:

The Pirate Party (henceforth TPP, since PP has some interesting connotations in English) did not get into the Riksdag, no. To get in, you need 4% of the votes. Last time around, in 2002, there was no TPP, and they got 0% of the votes. How is anything above 0% "being keelhauled"?

TPP said "this is going to be a close election, there are about a million people in Sweden sharing files, we can become a tiebreaker by gaining 4%". Making file sharing legal is the best-understood point of their political tenets (as few "intellectual property" institutions as possible, better privacy, reforming the copyright system). I don't fault them for picking exactly what they did to run on, or by the issue they made themselves known by (legalize file sharing). Which isn't the same as saying there weren't problems.

The other day I visited a page listing some Swedish political parties. The one line that described TPP was "They want to make downloading music and movies legal". Depending on how you look on it, it may be technically correct, however it's vastly oversimplified: The TPP reform of copyright includes perpetual and unlimited rights to *private* copies of anything, and shortens the exclusivity of selling the work to a five year duration instead of the author's-life + 70 + whatever-Disney-can-coax-international-law-into years of the current system, which effectively legalizes a lot of file sharing, which by necessity includes both uploading *and* downloading. These issues are hard and complicated. The Man on The Street won't be able to detail copyright law beyond perhaps author's-life + 70, and I don't think a tenth of the population have even heard of the continuous lengthening of the copyright period.

The "regular" parties run using a platter of promises - hundreds of them - where at least two are presented in a reasonable way. The Green Party (once a similar tiebreaker running using a similar philosophy) runs using more advanced stuff like TPP, but the few-words summary here, as expressed by The Man on The Street - "be nice to the environment and give us more family time" - is infinitely more agreeable to, well, most people, than "make downloading music and movies legal", which reeks of "omg plz make everything free kthx!1" rather than the well-thought out proposals behind TPP. This is one factor why TPP didn't make it all the way.

The other factor, then, is that more people found it more rewarding to vote for one of the two blocs (who mostly carry full political agendas on *all* issues, even the aforementioned Green Party) or on other small parties.

You could argue that the pie-in-the-sky chance that they would ever reach 4% was abysmal, but if they hadn't been so optimistic about it, I am positive that a lot of supporters would just have given up, saying "we're not going to make it anyway, why bother?". TPP didn't get its way, but I find it hard to deem them a failure. From 0 to sub-1% of above five million votes in less than 10 months is astounding work.

Obviously the point of the party is to use the power of democracy to ensure that such actions are no longer illegal.
Do you think Marxist parties should be shut down just because the state ownership of industry they advocate is not permitted under current laws? I thought America was supposed to be better than other countries since it allows any ideas to participate in the democratic process.

I thought America was supposed to be better than other countries since it allows any ideas to participate in the democratic process.

I think you forgot to add [/ironic];-)

Charlie Chaplin was deported due to his anti-war opinions, while there was
attempts to do the same for John Lennon. Now, imagine you are not famous, rich and
happens to be a muslim....
(deportation [zmag.org])

The new documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" tells the story of Lennon's transformation from loveable moptop to antiwar activist, and

Actually that was in the verse "But when you talk about destructionDon't you know you can count me out (in)". The Mao verse was "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow". I wasn't thinking properly.

Charlie Chaplin was deported due to his anti-war opinions, while there was attempts to do the same for John Lennon. Now, imagine you are not famous, rich and happens to be a muslim.... (deportation)

You're leaving out one major distinction about Chaplin and Lennon. Neither were American Citizens and it's perfectly legal to have them removed from US soil. (Notice that I didn't say wether it's right or wrong... Just LEGAL)

there is a northern country (forgot which) who has a party, which wants to legalize sex with children. so there is the question: is the "pirate party" nearer to marxism than to a fellony?

And to put it quite bluntly, this is perfectly fine. The point of a democracy is that it responds to the will and wishes of its citizens; if they want a law changed, then they have the right (and, I would argue, the responsibility) to attempt to change it within the structure of the system, if possible.

The only difference between the Pirate Party and NAMBLA (I think that's the 'sex with children' thing you're talking about) is how personally offensive you find the behavior they want to legalize. As long as they're not doing the behavior in question while it's still illegal, they're perfectly within their rights to campaign for a change in the laws. This is why political speech is protected by the First Amendment in the United States, and why we tolerate things like the Nazi Party and the Stalinists and any number of other kooks.

For a less extreme example, consider the people who advocated for the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930s; history has shown that they were probably doing the right thing, but at the time they could have easily been accused of "advocating illegal behavior."

If you didn't allow people this freedom, then democracy would be nothing but an irreversible march into an oblivion of illegality.

For a less extreme example, consider the people who advocated for the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930s; history has shown that they were probably doing the right thing, but at the time they could have easily been accused of "advocating illegal behavior."

I have never smoked marijauna, but I can see that it's illigality is stupid, anti-freedom, and causes far more problems than it solves. Don't you think there were those like me in the 1930's advocating the repeal of alchohol prohibition?

If you believe in free speech then you have to put up with people saying things you don't like.

Personally I regard it as a test of integrity, when I find someone claims to support free speech except when it's racist/sexist/whatever/else/they/don't/like I know they're a hypocrite and I needn't give much weight to their opinions.

Revolting as the idea of a polical party campaigning to legalise child abuse may be, I'd campaign to support it's right to exist.

when I find someone claims to support free speech except when it's racist/sexist/whatever/else/they/don't/like I know they're a hypocrite

If they call for the government to arrest someone for speech that is racist/sexist/whatever/else/they/don't/like, then they are a hypocrite, and they don't support free speech. If they merely call the 'offending' speaker a dickwad, then not only are they not hypocrites, they are demonstrating the power of free speech.

Might I remind you that the founding politicians of America were violating many English laws and guilty of leading revolts against the British Crown... punishable by death if I'm not mistaken.

Just because a political party is advocating something currently illegal doesn't mean it's a bad idea to elect them and change that law. Especially if it's a stupid law or is detrimental to the populace.

Very insightful. In fact, there's hardly a point to having a political party that is advocating legal actions, unless those legal actions are under threat. An "anti-theft" party, which thinks it should be illegal to steal car stereos, for example, would be downright stupid. The only reason I can think to start a political party is when you're unhappy with the current laws, or to combat laws that you're afraid might be passed in the future...

Well considering those actions are not against the law, they are not illegal (please try and remember, different countries have different laws...)

This wasnt all that suprising, they had a lot of interest, but they failed at getting it together into votes. This was their first attempt and a lot of the probs were related to learning how to do political party things.

Well considering those actions are not against the law, they are not illegal (please try and remember, different countries have different laws...)

But if you don't harmonize or harmonise your laws to those of the United States and European Union, you won't be able to join the treaty organizations that can get you favorable trading status with the developed world.

As pointed out in the commentary to earlier slashdot articles, the scandinavian idea of piracy (the high seas kind) goes hand-in-hand with economic liberalism. While the British and Dutch were establishing monoplies on commodities, controlling ports, pursuing embargoes, and charging tariffs, there were captains who traded goods freely with little concern for the laws of foreign governments.

Of course, this free trade threatened the income of the empires, so they outlawed piracy and charged their own capt

"Pirating music" is only illegal because we humans say that it is illegal.

I can imagine a world where the state pays a recording artist for every download and provides music for its citizens for free. Something like state supported arts.

The point is that WE define what legal and illegal mean, and they don't have to continue meaning what they mean now. In fact, the meaning of "own" has changed already--we don't "own" software, despite the fact that we hold a shiny disc in our hands. We only own the "righ

How about a world where we aren't spied on every moment of our lives to monitor the possiblity that we are listening to music without paying -- what used to be normal until the twentieth century.How about no commercial police state?How about, oh, artists being paid for performances rather than recordings? Almost no artists make money from deals with record companies, as the companies have their own private accounting theories. Artists get real money from live performances, hence the record companies buying

In a debate close to the election, both of the top candidates for the prime minister post got asked the question 'does the current laws making file sharing (of copyrighted materials) a felony need to be changed?', to which both responded 'yes'.

In fact, one of the candidates (I forget which one) said 'we cannot have a law on the books that makes our children criminals. This needs to be changed, and we will have to find a way to compensate artists.'

It would certainly horrible to imagine that any of the anti-slavery politicians in American history were suggesting anything like breaking the law. Depriving slaveowners of their property would be theft.

They seemed to advocate that anyone could copy anyone elses intellectrual property without permission. Best summed up as the abolition of conventional capitalism. If they had just been honest and renamed themselves the 'communist party' they might have done a bit better. Hopefully now people will see them for the freeloading jokes that they are.

I would like to first begin by saying that nowhere have I read the Pirate Party will abolish all rights to personal property (as Socialism aims to achieve). Secondly, conventional capitalism can function fine under the engine of providing a service or a good in exchange for money.

Yes, intellectual property is free for anyone to copy but these are just ideas. Capitalism can function just fine if everyone can use anyone's idea for free -- you just suffer less incentive to come up with innovative ideas since copying someone else's is easier.

Freeloading, maybe... but not the whole way. And it's nowhere close to the extremes of socialism, only in one aspect of it. Most people on/. hate IP laws anyways, let the party run and see what happens. Stop calling them names and let Democracy take it's course!

Ok, first calm down. This is (supposed to be) a level headed discussion (no, I'm not new here).

Second, learn to use the <br> tags. They are your friends and do wonders for your readability.

Third, they ran and lost. That's how Democracy works. Maybe they'll do better next year, maybe they won't even be around, who knows? But one thing is for sure, when you outright say they shouldn't even exist, you're starting to hinder the goal of Democracy. Sounds like you have a pretty closed mind, my friend.

Also, thanks for writing me off as a hippie. I'm glad you took 2.5 seconds and one post to know me and I highly value your (fairly incorrect) stereotype. I was only trying to point out where they're coming from, not advocating it. You either need to do more reading or stop talking because you really don't understand the goals of this party.

Copyright laws institute monopolies on cultural goods and as such represent the antithesis of capitalism. In a capitalist system, anyone would be entitled to manufacture and offer the goods for sale. Supply would then fluctuate with general interest in the goods and the profit that could be made from providing them, unlike the fixed pricing schemes we are seeing with today's monopolistic situation.Of course, part of the point of a capitalist system would be that we'd get affordable items - it isn't difficult to understand why the entertainment industry would rather maintain the status quo.

Agreed 100%. They seemed to advocate that anyone could copy anyone elses intellectrual property without permission. Best summed up as the abolition of conventional capitalism.

'[A]bolition of conventional capitalism?'

Tell me, exactly, what is 'capitalistic' about the current 'intellectual property' system? Do you know what capitalism is? How is the scenario promoted by the Pirate Party, i.e., the legalization of 'piracy', causing the means of production to be somehow not private? Under the legalization of